As you may know last night was Halloween. A very spooky night where kids go out dressed as bumblebees and fast-food items, while adults sit at home and watch the Shining between handing out candies to said kids. But for me, since it was a Wednesday and no one has parties on Wednesdays, I was stuck in my apartment with seemingly nothing to do. Then things got all too spooky.

ooo0o00ooo00000oooo0oo0o0o0ooo0o0000ooo

I opened my rom for Pokemon Gold, or as it will hereby be referred to, Pokemon Ghould. To have a good time and to wait a little while for The Shining which came on at 11pm.

It started out as innocently as any Pokemon game... Until the main protagonist was revealed to be Freddy Krueger! Of course, since Freddy died in a fire probably, the Pokemon he chose was the fire Pokemon, Cyndaquil which he then named Cerberus, after the hell dog what has 3 heads. Yes, you're right, it hadn't occurred to me that Cyndaquil is actually a porcupine, and that spooky reference doesn't really apply.

Freddy ran errands for a tree doctor or something, until he ran into his rival, ASH. The mysterious boy that steals Pokemon and has red hair like fire so it makes sense that he is Freddy's rival and also that his name is ASH. Freddy won their fight, because Freddy had a fire pokemon, and Ash had a water pokemon. Fire is strong against Water I think, because I had a fire once when I was cooking bacon in a frying pan. I tried to throw water on it, by the fire only got bigger.

My next goal was to get a bunch of bats to put in my PC. So that if anyone opened my PC a bunch of bats would fly out and scare them! So I caught six Zubats and named them: Alucard(so it's cool and cryptic and only goth kids know his true form), BelaLugosi, SkyDolphin, Bat Man, TeamEdward, and ImpalerVlad. I also caught a Spinarak named DrDreadful to fill my PC with cobwebs and such.

I didn't get much further, but I did manage to tackle the ghost tower. Which I immensely appreciated, somehow Nintendo knew I would do a Pokemon Ghould playthrough and they gave me an easily accessed haunted house. I caught a Gastly in there named "oOo A Ghost".

Then to top off my spooky party, I got myself a Mareep named WearWoolf. And cheated for an Aerodactly named Boo-Ridley.

So the moral of the story is, Pokemon isn't spooky. No matter how hard you try, you'll only look ridiculous.

Happy Feet 2 is a game about dancing penguins that dance and solve puzzles. The main objective of most levels is to dance your way(by holding the square button) to an obstacle, then ground-pounding to solve said puzzle. Yes, all puzzles are solved by ground pounding. Sometimes there are other cool missions though, like a bobsled-style race into the ocean. Although, that race can be beaten without pressing any buttons. There are also cool quick time event dancing sequences where you have a dance off with some penguin who thinks he's tough shit! You'll never top my moves asshole!

Perhaps the only downfall of the game is, sadly, the story. As you may know, Happy Feet 2 takes place in Alaska. And as you should know, penguins don't live in Alaska, in fact they live on the opposite side of the world! In Antarctica! That's just lazy writing if you ask me, knowing the facts on the animals in your game is a must.

Aside from the lazy writing though, it does kinda make up for it in it's cutscenes. Cutscenes are done in this cool avant garde way, where it's not a video, it's just moving stills of penguins while they talk to each other about the hardship of being a penguin or something. I don't really remember because, if I'm being honest, I was high the whole time I played.

There is also co-op! The co-op makes the game twice as good, because then you're guaranteed to have at least TWO dancing penguins on screen at all times.

Which brings me to my next point. Along the way in each level you pick up more penguin friends on your journey. In fact it's mandatory to get your penguin buddies, because sometimes there is a minimum penguin limit to advance to the next stage of the level. I must say, having 5, 6, or 7 dancing penguins all in your troupe is a fucking good time.

Pros:
+ It's got penguins
+ It's got dancing
+ co-op
+ It's adorable

Cons:
- Alaska

All in all I'd give the game 7.5 radical headbangs and a sticker that reads "Rockin'"

Back in 2003 a close friend of mine used to visit me very regularly. At that time I was pretty stupid and didn't really know how to entertain guests. Luckily for me she was seemingly fine with watching me play singleplayer video games and switching off every now and then. At this time I was big into a few relatively new releases, Animal Crossing and GTA: Vice City. Her favourite game was Animal Crossing, but when she came over all she wanted to do was play Vice City. I figured this was because her parents didn't let her play these rated M games and used me as a way to enjoy them, that or she just had great taste. It was great fun, as I'm sure you all know, killing people, shouting racial slurs at Cubans and Haitians, listening to A Flock Of Seagulls "I Ran", it sort of became our thing. However, one day I was invited to her house, the anti-Vice City house and we had to change our game plan.

So we were at her house just sitting and talking and looking at each other, y'know like regular human beings, when she mentions that she wishes she had Vice City so we could play some more. Then I had a momentary lapse of brilliance, I had thought of a way to bring the Vice City experience to Animal Crossing.

She had no idea what I was planning, but I promised her it would all be worthwhile. I created a town called Miami and began working for Tom Nook(Every kingpin has to start somewhere right?). Once I had paid off my debt I was ready to take over Miami. If you think about it, Animal Crossing and GTA are essentially identical. Both are about earning money and power and supporting friends while you take down your enemies. So, I head down to the tailor to create some designs for my gang, y'know, guns with bullets firing, a gang symbol so people recognize our turf, some police tape for crime scenes, the outline of a dead body, pretty standard Animal Crossing fare.

Now I'm sure you're wondering how I could turn this cutesy game into a GTA-style experience. Well let me explain how things worked in Miami. You became friends, or enemies with the animals in town based on the way they reacted to you and the way they treated you. You would do favours for your friends, and you would try to drive your enemies out of town. The most common way of finding a new enemy was based on the way your friends talked about them. For example, my best friend Cube didn't like Billy, because Billy was always borrowing stuff and not returning it. His nickname for Billy was "flaky" because he was always flaking around or something fucking stupid like that. It was then my job to retrieve the "stolen" item from Billy and proceed to force Billy out of town. This meant going to the acre billy lived in and putting up signs of gunshots pointing at his house, kinda like a drive by. As well as putting up my gang sign so people know who did it. I would then proceed to chop down all the trees and dig up all the flowers on his lot and drop garbage all over the place to make his area real ugly. Next I'd dig holes around Billy so he could not move anymore. Finally I would send him angry letters full of insults and obscenities, kinda like the comments I leave some of you idiots on this site.

Eventually Billy got fed up and ditched town. That is when I go in and place down the police tape, outline of a corpse, and gang signs. This was done to claim the turf as my own, and send a message to those who think of (animal)crossing me and my friends.

In the end, this new form of Animal Crossing became our favourite thing to do(only for a few days, it gets boring after a bit, there's only so many times you can do that...).

Animal Crossing is kinda like an art game almost. It's a game about nothing, but it's a game where you can do anything as long as you've got creativity.

You may be familiar with the concept of a spirit animal. It's some made up stuff to make people sound cool. Apparently, I have the honour of being a hippopotamus. Although, the test didn't seem very professional, I'm not sure if I trust those results...

Building on that, I thought it'd be interesting if I found my spirit Pokemon.

In this endeavor, the first Pokemon that came to mind was Charmander. Charmander was a childhood favourite of mine. However, if you surveyed the entire world, the majority of people would say charmander or charizard is the best Pokemon ever. And I'm not some conformist hipster, so this couldn't possibly be my spirit pokemon.

My next thought, my true favourite pokemon: Gengar. As much as I like the design of Gengar, and think he's the best looking Pokemon ever, I simply couldn't be him. He's a ghost, implying that he's dead. I, on the other hand, am very much alive. To add to that, he also has a frightening appearance that is sure to scare some people off, unlike me, the most handsomest man ever(no pics means it's true).

Now I must delve deeper into my interests. Well, I am a psychologer in training, so maybe I'm more suited to a psychic pokemon. Alakazam? No, I couldn't rock a mustache, plus spoons are gross. Hypno? No, I don't believe in magic. Slowpoke? No, I'm not a retard(sorry). Jynx? No, I'm not bla-- I mean, I'm not a woman.

Perhaps my love of electronics would make me an electric type pokemon. First Pokemon to come to mind was Jolteon. I'm not really a Jolteon fan though, I much prefer Vaporeon, Espeon and Umbreon. Then I thought of the concept of Eevee. Eevee essentially symbolizes any middle-classed white person living in North America. Your options are limitless, you can be anything you'd like. This brings me back to my psychic point, I chose to be psychic. Perhaps my spirit Pokemon is Espeon.I pondered this for a moment, then it hit me, cats symbolize women! Once again, I'm not a woman.

Hey guys I'm back again. I've been extra busy lately and decided to give you guys an update, before your memory of me completely disappeared.

I've been having troubles with bills and such, as two of my rommates moved out, because they got married(don't worry, they're a guy/girl, not that there's anything wrong with gay marriage >.>). So, to cover this months rent I had to sell my 3DS. Although, I'm sure to have it back by July, I am deeply saddened, even though it got very little use.

In other news, I got a job, which has been taking up a lot of my free time. I work at a bestbuy as the cashier guy, no big deal. On top of that, the summer program at school started on Tuesday, I have a 2 hour class every morning on the weekdays. It's a darn shame. That's 10 hours of my day dedicated to work. With my much needed 8 hours of sleep, I've only got 6 hours of gaming, eating, socializing, internetting and blogging. So, I had to eliminate one of these: blogging. Fret not, this stoppage isn't permanent, you'll get to see me embarrass myself with poor writing on a regular basis soon enough.

In terms of gaming, I've done my usual Summer schedule; Super Mario Sunshine and my backlog. Playing Super Mario Sunshine at the start of June has been a ritual of mine since 2004 and I must say, with all modesty, I've gotten pretty damn good. I started today, got 40 shines so far. The game is still as fun as ever. No matter what the haters say, Mario will always be my go to franchise for definite fun. The games all seem to be timeless(except SM64), sure their graphics can't keep up, but the gameplay can go head to head with any and all current platformers. I guess that doesn't say much though, the genre has diminished greatly over the past few years.

I also played through and completed LBP2 and Ratchet and Clacnk: Crack In Time. The former sucked and the latter was great. That is all.

In more recent gaming, I also got my hands on Portal 2. I found the singleplayer to be... lacking. Sure, chapters 3, 7 and 8 were great, but the rest felt just like filler to me. A lot of them didn't even have puzzles... On the other hand, I did really enjoy the humour of the game, and I was always entertained, so I'd give the single-played an 8/10. As for the multi-player, I thought it was terrific. Playing with a friend is fun enough on it's own, but rarely do you see co-op this well designed. There's no filler parts like in the singleplayer, it's just test upon test, upon test. It's one of the best gaming experiences to date it is very much Portal 2's saving grace, a perfect 10/10 from me.

Well, yea, I'm still here. Sorry for an all time low in quality, but I'm very tired and didn't have much to say anyway. I'll get more active around E3.